News vs. Advertising: Does the Audience Perceive the ‘Journalistic Distinction’?

Evidence indicates the audience does not perceive either news or advertising as a homogeneous content category, distinct from the other, in the media.


448
newseditorial and advertising departments, generally with little or no interaction between their personnel.
This separatism is based on both journalistic tradition and a production perspective. Advertising is the "paid for" content which supports the news content, and traditional wisdom considers the news content as the part of the media that the audience needs and/or wants most. While recent studies are challenging this simplistic categorization, advertising, at least implicitly, is often considered as a necessary evil. For example, one text book states: The typical daily newspaper is mildly entertaining-though not as entertaining as television. It is reasonably informative-though not as informative as many magazines. And it is a superlative vehicle for local advertising. Will that be sufficient rationale for a mass medium in 1980?
Journalists tend to project their perceptions of media content categories to the audience. It is assumed that the audience clearly distinguishes between the advertising and nonadvertising content of the media and, like journalists, considers advertising as a homogeneous concept across media. However, there is a growing body of evidence which challenges these journalistic assumptions.
A 1975 study of a small, rural daily newspaper led to the conclusion that readers "view advertising as a source of local news."6 A similar conclusion was reported in a study of newspapers in 14 communities in various parts of the country.
The authors wrote that: . . .these data argue strongly that use of the media for news and preference of the ads in the media are related. While the direction of effect is not discernible from thesc studies, the implication is that the news and advertising departments do not operate independently in the minds of audience members. While the professionals in the departments may see their tasks as separate, the readers Seem not to agree.' Based on these and other studies, three tentative hypotheses were derived: HI. In the context of perceived interest, the audience does not consider advertising and nonadvertising content of the newspaper as distinct categories.

H2.
In the context of attitudes toward television content, the audience does distinguish between the advertising and nonadvertising content of the medium.
H3. Audience attitudes are more favorable toward newspaper advertising than toward television advertising.

Methodology
The hypotheses were tested by extensive re-analysis of data collected during 1974 in a large metropolitan area. The instrument contained 342 statements relating to life-styles, readership habits, perceived interest in various types of content and attitudes toward the media and advertising. It was administered to a random sample of the metropolitan area population, with 25 1 usable instruments returned. A sub-sample of 109 completed instruments was randomly selected for factor analyses.
To test the firkt hypothesis, 43 readerinterest statements were factor-analyzed, 'Enwu F. h r h , Genld L Grotu and Barbara D c h u .

New-?
Adwrrumg using R-analysis. Eight of the statements were identified as advertising content, and the remaining 35 were news story items. If the audience clearly distinguished between advertising and nonadvertising items, we would expect the advertising items to cluster into one type.
The second hypothesis was tested by calculating mean scores for the full sample of 251 on 16 statements that related to attitudes toward and use of television. In the context of expressed attitudes, we would expect no clear pattern relating to statements to emerge if the audience did not distinguish between the advertising and nonadvertising content of television.
The third hypothesis was tested in two ways. First, the mean scores for the full sample were calculated for nine statements that related to newspaper content. If the audience did not distinguish between newspaper and television advertising content, we would expect to find similar patterns emerge in both the television and newspaper attitude statements. To further test the third hypothesis, 39 statements relating to advertising content were factoranalyzed. In the R-analysis, we would expect the statements relating to television and newspapers to cluster together into types if the audience did not perceive any dimensions of difference between advertising content in the two media.

Results
The results of the analyses must be viewed with caution because of the posthoc nature of the study. However, on the basis of the analyses, all three hypotheses rcceived support.
Newspaper Advertising. The 43 readerinterest statements factored into 11 types, which accounted for 50.1 % of the variance.
Most of the types were easily interpretable; e.g., Type 2 contained five sportsrelated items, Type 3 contained three violence-related items. Type 5 contained three fine-arts-related items, etc. (Table 1) However, the eight items identifiad as relating to advertising content were dispersed among six types rather than clustering into a single type. Two adveftising items were in Type 1. two in Type S, one        in Type 6, one in Type 8. one in Type 9 and one in Type 10. Additionally, the advertising items tended to fall into types containing news items related to the same subject. For instance, the two advertising items in Type 1 involved vacation homes and automobile prices. Other statements in Type 1 included items relating to camp ing and fishing. The advertising item in Type 6 involved interest rates at a bank, and the other three statements in Type 6

Statement
were news items related to financial matters. On the second-highest loadings, the eight advertising items again dispersed among six types.
Several Q-analyses were run, with various combinations of the 43 reader-interest statements and statements dealing with reading habits, attitudes toward the media, etc. No types emerged from any of the analyses in which there was a pattern of either reading or avoiding all advertising items.
The data arc consistent with previous studies and tend to support the hypothesis that newspaper readers do not distinguish between 'advertising" and "news" content in the context of perceived interests. If the content contains information of perceived interest and/or value to the reader, it a p parmtly is considered "information" rather than "news" or 'advertising," contrary to the traditional journalistic distinction. Television Advertising. Mean scores were calculated for the full sample of 251 on 16 statements that relate to attitudes toward and use of television. Although attitudes toward television in general are highly favorable, all but one attitude statement relating to television advertising are negative. (Table 2) There was almost total agreement with the statement, "I like television news programs," with a mean score of 4.28 ( 5 = strongly agree). Other statements with "agree" mean scorn included "You learn quite a lot from television," 3.74; "Television is our primary source of entertainment," 3.72 and 3.68 (statement repeated in instrument); and "Every family with teenage children should have more than one TV set," 3.31.
On the other hand. all statements relating to television advertising received negative ratings. For example, one statement (repeated in the instrument). "There is too much advertising on television." received mean scores of 4.03 and 3.93, indicating strong agreement. Other negative statements with high agreement mean scorn included, T V commercials insult my intelligence." 3.83; and another statement repeated in the instrument, "I don't pay much attention to radio and/or television commercials," 3.23 and 3.21.
The two positive statemen@ on televi- sion advertising both received mean scores indicating disagreement. "Television advertising is a real benefit to the housewife" received a mean score of 2.70 and "Newspaper advertising is less informative than TV advertising" received a mean score of 2.46. Thus, the people in the sample apparently have different attitudes toward the advertising and nonadvertising content of television. They perceive television as a primary source of entertainment and like television news programs, but dislike television commercials.
Newspapers vs. Television. In contrast, respondents did not make a similar distinction on statements relating to newspaper content. (Table 3) Both general attitudes toward the newspaper and toward newspaper advertising are favorable. The strongest agreement was with the statement, "When I'm interested in the details of something, I prefer the newspaper to radio or television," with a mean score of 4.05 (S=strongly agree). The advertising statements are intermixed with general statements about newspapers, and all advertising statements are favorable toward newspapers.
It is interesting to note that in response to the statement, "I enjoy reading the ads in a newspaper more than the actual news," 10% of the full sample either agreed or strongly agreed and another 22% were neutral. However, if the first hypothesis is valid, the statement may have been mean-  ingless to many respondents who d o not distinguish between advertising and news and consider advertising as "actual news." To further test the third hypothesis, 39 statements relating to advertising were factor analyzed. In the R-analysis, the statements clustered into seven types. and several perceived dimensions of advertising clearly emerged. (Table 4) Type 1 statements (n=4) all relate to television advertising and all are negative statements. The 13 statements in Type 2 are print-oriented, with eight specifically mentioning newspapers and two mentioning "Consumer Reports" type publications.
Type 3 statements (n = 6) related primarily to the role of personal influence in purchase decisions. Six of the nine statements in Type 4 involve the general concept of consumer benefits from advertising. All three statements in Type 5 refer to not paying attention to advertising, both in broadcast and newspapers. The lone statement in Type 6 referred to the role of habit in purchasing. Two of the t h m statements in Type 7 are related to newspaper advertising, and the third statement is not identifed by medium.
In general, then, the statements relating to television advertising tended to cluster into different types than those relating to newspaper advertising. The only excep tions are those statements relating to perceived consumer benefits from advertising and statements refening to not paying attention to advertising. Thus, the data offer tentative support for the hypothesis that consumers do make a rather clear distinction between some dimensions of television and newspaper advertising, with attitudes toward newspaper advertising more favorable than toward television advertising.

Summary and Conclusions
Extensive re-analyses of data from a 1974 study in a large metropolitan area offer support for the three hypotheses advanced in this study. In the context of perceived interest, the audience tends not to make a clear distinction between advertising and nonadvertising content in newspapers. Rather, it appears to regard the content of newspapers as a source of information, regardless of whether the journalist categorizes the information as "news" or "advertising." The audience, on the other         hand, does appear to distinguish between the advertising and nonadvertising content of television in the context of attitudes toward the medium. It appears to perceive television as a primary source of entertainment and is favorable toward televi-sion news, but tends to be negative toward television advertising. Finally, the audience appears to be generally mom favorable toward newspaper advertising than toward television advertising.
(Please turn to page 521)